And
she’s buh-hi-hi-in
a stair-hair-hair… way…
to heah-vun.
— Robert Plant

Forty
Days in the Desertby
R.T. Jamison

EXCERPT

It’s
raining sand. Fine, warm, flaxen sand. It drifts down like
powdered sugar and dusts the trees and lawn furniture. No
breeze distracts this sand from its sharp incline,
straight down. It trails away skyward, a faint yellow
smudge in a cloudless expanse. Such an apparition hardly
gathers any attention for hours. No one seems to notice
the slow buildup of grit, a grainy patina on what many
neighbors already consider an eyesore. The mounds of
tires, the tattered lawn furniture, the junked cars, the
mailbox crafted from an engine block. Somehow a dusting of
sand makes this ramshackle ranch house on an unpaved road
in an unincorporated expanse seem staged and muted—as
if our lens is smudged with a bit of white lithium grease.
The sand goes unnoticed. It is, admittedly, a dusty place.